The present invention relates to a silver halide color photographic light-sensitive material containing a novel compound capable of releasing a development inhibitor with a high development inhibiting capacity at an appropriate timing during development.
Recently, as silver halide light-sensitive materials, particularly color light-sensitive materials for photographing, high-speed light-sensitive materials which are superior in graininess, sharpness, and color reproduction and also have a high storage stability are desired. One representative example is an ISO 400 light-sensitive material (Super G-400) having a high image quality equivalent to that of ISO 100.
As a compound which improves the sharpness and does not degrade the storage stability of a light-sensitive material, compounds which imagewise release a development inhibitor via two or more timing groups are described in, e.g., Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication Nos. 60-218645, 60-249148, and 61-156127 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,861,701. However, when any of these compounds is used, the speed (timing) at which the development inhibitor is released or the diffusibility of the development inhibitor is inappropriate. Therefore, the sharpness, graininess, and color reproduction are not satisfactorily improved. Also, many light-sensitive materials containing these compounds significantly increase the fog or decrease the sensitivity when left to stand for long time periods after exposure and before development or when exposed to a high-temperature, high-humidity ambient.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 5-313322 has disclosed novel development inhibitor release compounds which can solve these problems. However, the disclosed practical compounds cannot meet recent increasing demands on image quality and are desired to be further improved.